Details of Claimant Commitments Emerge And Show the Biggest DWP Farce Yet

A recent response to a Freedom of Information request reveals the first clear details of what will be expected of claimants when Universal Credit is launched.

The new benefit, which will be rolled out nationally from October, will replace all unemployment and sickness/disability benefits along with housing benefits and working tax credits. All claimants who are unemployed or working part time will be expected to sign a ‘Claimant Commitment’ detailing how they will try to find a job or ‘more or better paid work’ if already employed.

Those who do not have a significant health problems will be mandated – under threat of sanction – to take part in Work Related Activity (meaning work, workfare, jobsearch or training) for 35 hours a week. Single parents with children between the ages of 5 and 13 will usually be required to spend 24 hours a week looking for work. Even those with serious disabilities or health conditions, currently in the Work Related Activity Group and claiming ESA, will have some form of mandated jobsearch.

The recently released documents (linked to below and uncovered by @refuted) should be shared and read by all claimants, along with everybody in work who is concerned about redundancy – because this is what you will face should you lose your job.

Jobcentre advisors will have unprecedented powers to compel claimants to carry out whatever old bollocks they can come up with to waste unemployed people’s time looking for jobs which aren’t there. Those who do not meet their Claimant Commitment could face having benefits stopped for up to three years. For those with children this could be devastating, for those severely unwell or disabled it could mean death.

As well as outlining the rules concerning Claimant Commitments the documents also give examples of how the new system might work in practice. A fictional Claimant Commitment shows how a claimant could be mandated to visit her local town centre twice a week to use Universal Jobmatch on the library computers*. She will also be expected to hand in CVs to local shops whilst she is there.

This ignores the fact that many libraries – if you can find one still open – charge for internet access and that she may have to take a bus into town. Astonishingly claimants could find themselves sanctioned because they are too poor to meet their job-seeking requirements.

The other aspect of her claimant commitment shows just how far Universal Credit has descended into farce. How many shops does the DWP think are in this town she lives in? Is she really expected to visit them every week, or even twice a week, to hand in a CV? If there’s one way guaranteed to make sure you don’t get a job somewhere it’s acting like a stalky weirdo who keeps turning up every other day waving a new CV even after being told there are no vacancies.

And this is the key point. There are no vacancies. Whilst those in big cities could just about get away with ‘cold calling’ and visiting employers for 35 hours a week, in small towns this will be ludicrous. Some of them only have a handful of shops. Some only one. Will unemployed people in remote areas be expected to spend 35 hours a week arguing with their local shopkeeper about why they should give them a job?

Such is Iain Duncan Smith’s obsession with punishing the unemployed for the failure of government, he has devised a system that is verging on parody. And a system that will soon fall over as millions of claimants swamp Jobcentres to use computers, telephones and printers.

Jobcentres are already creaking under the strain of high unemployment. There is no requirement to tell the DWP you have online access at home even if you do. A recent response to another FOI request also confirms that there is no requirement to give the Jobcentre your phone number or email address. It therefore seems a sensible idea not to tell the Jobcentre you have a computer, or a phone. Demand to use theirs instead and watch Claimant Commitments collapse.

*as the law currently stands on cookies, you can not be mandated to use Universal Jobmatch anywhere but Jobcentres, so without a change in the law, this aspect of a Claimant Commitment could be challenged.

343 responses to “Details of Claimant Commitments Emerge And Show the Biggest DWP Farce Yet”

The whole fucked system is ludicrous. I really can’t believe what is transpiring. This is an absolute bastardisation of disadvantaged folk into nightmarish proportions. I am fortunate to live in Australia, and thank my lucky stars, but I am utterly astonished and angered at what is unfolding in the UK. No justice, just utterly penalizing people!

This is getting more and more Orwellian. The unemployed will soon be subject to more monitoring and conditionality than people on probation. All that’s left for the government to do now is to tag and chip every claimant. But we all know IDS wouldn’t be satisfied even if that did happen – no doubt the workhouse will follow eventually.

the sick do want to be well…the unemployed do want to work…their conditionality schemes are grossly oppressive…specifically designed to make the sick, sicker…they say what ones symptoms are, and therefore, how sick one is, my voice or pleas to them count for nothing, one has to prove over and over again how ones causal diagnosed diseases, are caused to be diagnosed by ones diseases and therefore symptoms of…this conditionality inquisition will also drive the sane insane…because ones voice is not heard..nasty and barbaric…demand 1, one is healed, 2 an end to unemployment, 3 restoration of humanity, at once…

you have given me a great idea
why dont people apply for every job going
even if they cannot do them
and crash the system
even better set up false accounts to do
it with the job center number with a reference
so they get bogged down with phonecalls
from upset employers
you will soon see an end to this farce

The problem with this idea is that those of us who do genuinely want a job are finding our applications binned by potential employers. It’s already happening where I live. On average there are 10 claimants for every job here, then on top of that every unemployed person has been told they HAVE to apply for 4 jobs a week. Employers won’t complain to the job centre, they will just pull out the first half a dozen suitable candidates and ignore the rest

part of my treatment is to get exercise and this I do and actually enjoy it but it takes a while as walking is difficult and painful and it is this exercise that will probably lose me my benefits when the new rules come into force and I cannot claim Job Seekers because I can’t work so will be stuck with nothing not even a home because i won’t be able to pay rent, (the stress is already building) so when that time comes I think I may get me the Jail and claim some Human Rights

Your ESA, or any benefits you’re are claiming will be withdrawn and you won’t be allowed to go for a piss, without asking some bully in uniform for permission. Did I mention walking around and visiting friends and stuff. The foods crap too. I don’t see many people wanting to do a stretch in the scrubs, but don’t let me stop you. If you’re a pretty boy I pity you.

BBC Look North reported earlier today on a news story of how the affluent town of Harrogate is experiencing unprecedented numbers of street sleepers in the Spa Town, this seems to be just the beginning of a much unwanted problem for the better off society in towns such as this. I say if this is the result of Tory voting hooray henries then tough luck for supporting a party where this kind of callous shunning of the poor is going to create ghettos in your own back yard.

Precisely. UNUM have been effectively setting government welfare policy since around 1993. They pay for the “research” used to justify it. They provide the “experts” who advise ministers. They use shell organisations to run seminars and conferences to keep politicians and senior civil servants in line. They stand to make literally billions of pounds in profits by making certain that people in work can see that it is impossible to survive on the state benefits their taxes were supposed to have paid for. Meanwhile thousands of sick and disabled people will die as “collateral damage”. It is the sickest political scandal I can remember, and we should all be demanding that at the very least the media should report this properly, and at the next opportunity we should all vote against EVERY sitting MP (of whatever party) who has ever voted in favour of any of these UNUM led reforms.

Bang on the money Big Bill ! You nailed it .. Frank Field is pushing for this too. Would be interesting to see who is behind this. They are creating a market by stigmatising people already on welfare and therefor people in work just now will gladly pay that bit extra to one of these blood sucking firms just to be seen to be paying their way and not being a “burden”.. Why does no one in the media highlight this ! We sussed it long ago..Insurance companies are bad news and are behind a lot of the draconian drug laws in this country and they should be called out on their despicable practices.

Right there with you. I think a colony of beetles has set up home in my mouth, it was open that wide for that long when I read that shite. Apparently even people who aren’t subject to any conditionality at all will have to sign a Claimant Commitment – presumably, just so that we know that whilst we may not have been directly criminalised, we still aren’t fully-fledged people with actual human rights.

I think the idea is that properly ‘committed claimants’ will be too busy to do any rioting or even much protesting. If we go off grid for more than a tiny number of minutes in any given hour and default on our ‘commitment’ ….

Goes to show that IDS, Hoban and the whole DWP are just a bunch of f**kwits living in a parallel universe to the rest of us. In any other country in Europe the people would be taking to the streets but here they are like sheep. So long as they have their ‘telly, booze & fags’ they are happy..

‘Twas ever thus. The English (I don’t know if the same is true in Scotland; I hope not) learn to stab each other in the back in playgrounds, and by the time they reach adulthood the idea of solidarity isn’t one they can even pay lip service to without forming a hierarchy. England is a country founded upon pessimism; the inability to follow through on anything, the tendency to moan rather than act, the inability to properly form communities or exhibit solidarity, the reluctance to riot or demonstrate, even the pride we take in our supposedly moderate nature… all of this is born of a profound, unshakeable pessimism that’s bred into us from our earliest days. Optimistic peoples get up and demand that things improve because they truly believe those things can be made permanently better. We do not. So we sit on our arses and despair, and at our worst, can only sneer at those who still have the traces of hope we’ve long since chalked up to immaturity.

Misery is the permanent condition of the English working class, its self-fulfilling prophecy of its own fate.

When IDS left the Army he was on the dole for a bit, but he didn’t spend 35 hours a week looking for work so like all the politicians who received a free university education, let’s screw everyone else – that’s everyone else apart from the very rich who get rewarded with tax cuts, but don’t pay any tax anyway! We know that our MPs are paid by us, but work for the 1%. How to get rid of them and what to do instead? Check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kxROfpHC_Y

I am disabled and in my mid-50s with a chronic degenerative condition, chronic pain and chronic deathly fatigue. I am housebound and mostly bedbound.

As such, needless to say I have been in WRAG for the past two years and on the Work Programme for several months.

If this “commitment comes about, (assuming I have not already died or committed suicide due to the DWP regime,in the meantime), I am not going to bother to even try to fight to stay alive, because I can see there is no way I can win.

I WILL end my life on receipt of any mandate letter about this, only taking the time first to email press releases to every disability campaign, media news desk and ‘still-human’ MP.

I can see many more people doing that, But i would say to them send letters to every newspaper with how you are treated, publicise it or they will carry on doing the unfair and evil practices they are now

Anon no matter how desperate , please, you mustnt do that. By all means tell the papers, media campaigners etc but to kill yourself? That is exactly what they want. IDS and the Tory selfish, uncaring, loathsome money swindling bullies want to drive out our spirit, our self respect and any fight we may have, so that they can do what they like to us. treat us like crap making us feel we are the lowest of the low..Taking us back to Victorian times… We really have to protest to be heard so that change is never in their favour. Never give in to them… I would rather bomb Parliament or number 10 and take a few of them out in the process, rather than top myself.

The way I see it is this. When I reach the end of my tether and can no longer cope there is another (more expensive) way that I can be fed and housed. The only question will be whether I decide it is morally acceptable to achieve that by assaulting on of the people responsible for putting me in that position, or simply destroying something valuable in their possession. I am not going to let them off the hook by taking my own life.

I’m with you mate, I am not even in the WRAG but I’m only 26 and have all sorts of severe mood disorders which show no sign of going away. I can’t face all this crap that’s coming down the pipeline it’s going to take nothing more than being called into atos and that’s the end of me. All I want is to be like everybody else with a job and some self respect. I am just made to feel like a scum bag. I don’t even like to be seen in the street as I know my neighbours must know I am on benefits.

Lets not be offensive. to the cunt, George Iain Duncan Smith…. when he was presumably kicked out of the army in 1981, he was unemployed for 6 months, and ended up proverbially fucking Betsy (daughter of a local n’eer de well) whilst living the life of riley, claiming unemployment benefit of the day.

If Universal Credit ever gets off the ground in October (which I doubt) everyone will challenge their claimant commitment in the seven days cooling off period, and I can see IDS may not have a job at that point due to the forthcoming court case in July at the Supreme Courts of Justice.

I can see IDS and the DWP being charged with contempt of court due to them ignoring the decision of the High Courts of Justice ruling in the Cait Reilly case and all the bullshit that followed.

Everyone will challenge their commitment – including all those who have had their benefits withheld in recent memory? it should be getting easier and easier to challenge what’s ‘on offer’ theoretically, as the whole set-up becomes more and more clearly ‘wild-west’ …

Conversely, though, the long lead-in time (if that’s a phrase) to what’s next on the agenda has meant that many, many people are now terrorised by the prospect of, if not the actuality of then the threat of the removal of their main source of income – either for a period of weeks/months, or completely.

Talking with someone who runs a food bank locally, demand is growing fast and (anecdotally), UJ is ‘working’ effectively – in monitoring whether some people have ‘done everything reasonable’ etc. -in some cases, providing the ‘evidence’ that they haven’t – enabling their being cut adrift from the benefit they were claiming (not for a set time – but their claim closed). I am not in this situation but finding this hard to write.

Much as it would be uplifting to see a mass refusal to sign, It’s hard to imagine, partly because everyone doesn’t get the ‘new information’ at once (it’s delivered individually and played down at the same time, the importance of complying – presumably – stressed). Both of the people I heard about today now understand that in ‘ticking the box’ they have been ‘caught’ in a non-crime and sentenced to devastation (one has a child under the age of 3).

There is more than one way to skin a cat , Don’t sign no commitment if everyone refuses to sign then his plans will be dead in the water , I for one wont sign it and if that means they take away my bit of sick money then so be it , can you imagine the out cry if the stopped every ones welfare money.

@linda e, completely agree (a general outcry hasn’t happened yet though – and the tennis starts soon). All out refusal would be needed and isn’t the difficulty with that simple but crucial idea that ‘everyone’ would need to be confident that ‘everyone else’ is going to do the same, before taking that kind of potentially difficult/dangerous step?

‘Communication, communication, communication’. If ‘backed up’ by thousands of others (& it seems somehow unlikely/would require some very organised …organisation) – maybe do-able. Those sanctioned off benefits (caught unawares/cajoled/tricked into ticking the UJ SanctionMatch box) and others who’ve managed to avoid it but understand it’s happening, can leave few who attend a JCP/undergo Atos assessments unaware that DWP carries never-previously-known risks – to themselves/any dependants they might have. Even without ‘rocking the boat’. Refusing to ‘commit’ should/could be a straightforward way to draw mass attention, but might easily be stamped on too (DWP holding tightly to the purse strings)?. Huge numbers of people refusing could be noisy but would ‘general public’ hear and just how separate from the ‘outside world’/soundproofed is are JCPs?. CC’s given not on a given day – and even though beyond anything thrown at people to date, who hasn’t been already expecting the now constant increases to ‘requirements’? (The letters sent en bloc last October regarding ‘changes to sanction regime’ (or however they worded it) were disturbing/designed to stay in people’s minds – so that in many/most people by now the very likely strongly-held, and with good reason, fear of stepping out of line has been fixed.

I’m strongly objecting to the none-too-subtle change from ‘agreement’ to ‘commitment’ with all it implies/removes – so (other than with these provisos) I will be with you. At the same time, I’m responsible for someone else’s well-being as well as my own & have to look at all possible ways to prevent you-know-who (dressed up as a faceless bureaucrat) from coming round, making a grab for any remaining freedoms we might have; any remaining chances to living a ‘normal’ life, eg. basic rights to food/shelter (& some paid work an added bonus). Any spare, remaining energy needed to improve existing not-so-great situation/s – all ideas carefully considered ….

absouletly absurd i,ll be doing a volunteer training next month so i can be a recovery champion for a post detox centre as well as doing a advanced counsellng course in september so i can get off the scrap heap who the hell has 35 hours spare to look for jobs that aint there

Brig, It’s not that you wouldn’t have time to look for jobs full time (35 hours per week), it’s the crushing, mind numbingness of the task that is the issue. That in itself will send the rate of depression soaring.

According to the UC credit training I had last week (I am a homelessness worker), the 35 hrs can include prepping for an interview, travelling etc, not just a job trawl. It would, for example, be okay to spend an a day researching a company, their mission statement, values etc- all the things its good to know if you want to work for a company.

However, as the mum of a preschool child I cannot imagine how you would do this without childcare. And what are single parents meant to do with their kids when they have interviews? Take them along too? Accessing short notice child care is impossible if you don’t have local support networks.

Hi Blanco, I think the idea is that you have to ignore the child/ren (they should be seen & not heard) – and also that “a full-time, responsible job is a pre-requisite to having children – and so you really shouldn’t have them before making sure such a thing is firmly in place …” *

*Quote taken from an imagined conversation around the IDS/Freemantle dinner table, just prior to ‘drinks on the terrace outside’.

I did have a full time job when I had him, but silly old me could only afford to go back to work part time on account of there being no help with childcare cost for the first 2 years, and the rent, travel and childcare alone adding up to waaaay more than my wages…… Part time work at least enabled me to access some tax credit……..

Yep, I have a really comprehensive book. Can scan and email it if you want it. Interview prep can include shopping for clothes. There’s some massive shockers in there too- for example the self employed will be assumed to be making at least the minimum wage equivalent in profit after one year of trading. That’s not the case for a lot of self employed that I know, but it’s non negotiable.

I’d be really interested to see that information but I don’t know how to get my email to you and don’t want to put it up publicly. Is there any way you can put it into a file that anyone can access – on something like Dropbox perhaps?

George Galloway was on The Keiser Report recently and he made the point that if Scotland did leave the union then the UK would lose 70 odd Labour seats and the Conservatives would win every election from that day forward. Imagine what they would do with that kind of power. He also made the point that the Conservatives would be so hostile to an independant Scotland that they would make life very very difficult indeed for the newly Independant nation.

That’s crucial for ordinary people, the independence issue in Scotland isn’t just about independence, it’s about giving people hope, something that the mass of the downtrodden have lost in much of the UK, hence the somewhat muted response so far to the government’s imposition of these draconian new rules with impossible conditions. Owen Jones (someone I’m a usually a little sceptical of) made a very valid point in Sunday Politics over the weekend, people have lost hope, and that is why they are apathetic. We know people are angry, we can see that here everyday in the comments, but that hasn’t resulted in a huge movement. We are quite rightly wary of any movement that claims to be for change, whether that be the Labour Party, (he stifles a laugh) or the People’s Assembly, which if the inaugural Cardiff meeting is anything to go by, is largely headed by Judas Goats from the Labour Party and Unite!

The Scots people need to view the independence issue as very much one in the face to the ConDem misgovernment in Westiminster, and solidarity with the English and Welsh people is vital. George Galloway is undoubtedly correct in stating that Labour would never be able to form a government in Westminster without the support of Scottish Labour votes, (allied with Welsh Labour votes), though to be fair, it’s far from certain that Labour could depend on the votes from Wales or Scotland, as even in Wales, where it has been said that if Labour had a donkey standing, the people would vote for it in the Valleys, that Labour now has the support in any way other than a default choice. I understand the reticence to vote for the real alternative, there is in Plaid Cymru, (who aren’t exactly calling Labour out on their collusion with the ConDems, thus missing an opportunity, however, this may be in an effort to not be seen as opportunist). Nonetheless, the fact that Plaid Cymru does have significant support in the South East Wales area, and has done for over 40 years, and now has a leader from the Rhondda may make a difference, especially if Scotland goes independent and succeeds in creating the kind of society that the people of Scotland want.

Westminster may try and make things difficult for a newly independent Scotland, but it’s quite amazing what a difference possession of substantial oil reserves makes! It also has to be pointed out that though Scotland may have to renegotiate some things with Europe, so will Westminster as they would no longer have quite the same clout as previously. It would most likely also upset the English political applecart somewhat, as Labour would then have to wake up and smell the coffee to even have a hope of gaining power, especially if Scottish independence starts off the train of Welsh independence in a serious way.

There is a lot of rather nasty hoo-haa about ‘nationalism’ and the disingenuous will try and accuse it of being variously fascist or nazi, but the truth is that kind of ‘nationalism’ isn’t really nationalism, but imperialism, which is more in line with the kind of nationalism that the Tories, Labour and the LibDems wrap themselves in. There are dangers with the idea of chauvanistic nationalism, as we see with the BNP, EDL and their ilk, and also with the (thankfully) fringe Celtic nationalist groups. But if the nationalism is a civic nationalism, (i.e. not based on blood kith & kin and a bogus sense of ‘roots’) that seeks to reflect the nation as it is today, with no looking back to a Golden, (and bogus) Past where everything was sunny, then I see little problem, (though any society has to be vigilant), Small nations seem to be better governed on the whole, more democratic.

An independent Scotland whose people stood in solidarity with the peoples of Wales and England would be a thorn in the side of any English government, and this is why Scottish independence is so opposed.

A vote for Scottish independence isn’t just about Scottish independence, but about the way these islands have been (mis)governed over the past decades. Maybe when if/when Scotland goes independent the present ‘British’ political parties will realise that flogging the dead carcase of neo-liberal economics is a total waste of time – and they will then realise what the rest of us have known since day one.

Greed doesn’t just make you blind to the needs of others, it makes you stupid as well.

In Denmark they mandated the unemployed to apply for a certain number of jobs every week. The equivalent of the job centre had to stop doing it because employers complained that they had to waste too much time sifting through useless CVs from people mandated to apply. That I think is the answer, if everyone sent off their CV to every local job – (presumably this could be automated) the universal job match system would collapse. Employers faced with sifting through thousands of applicants whenever they used it would stop.

Swamping the bureaucracy is a great tactic, and the proposed Universal Credit rules almost forces us to do just that – the scheme is totally insane!

Also, and this is the most worrying aspect of UC, it has only been tested using a relatively small sample of simple claims, i.e. single claimants who are able-bodied. How is the realtime system going to work – it’s one thing bringing in legislation so ensure that employers use it, but human errors occur, and what about actions of pure malice/spite on the part of a rogue employer? What if a small employer becomes sick and is unable to feed the required information in that week? What happens if the computer systems go down – I know there are ‘fail-safe’ measures in place, but shit happens sometimes, and systems totally fail, this kind of thing only has to happen once.

For once it would seem that the government has brought in changes that we don’t actually have to campaign against, but rather comply with them in order to bring the system crashing down. Bizarre.

sib…it is made torturous to put people off of claiming their legal entitlement to benefits, cause even greater oppression, put mountains of conditionality, and damage human health even further…a managed decline…their hope, will be to slash the number of benefit claims, in the 1st place…and cause an even deeper living nightmare, for those able to somehow find the resources to claim and sustain them…the system is bad enough now, and god knows what will constitute a properly working system, i would consider their view will be, to get people off of benefits to be their desired vic-tory goal…

Though we are for the first time facing these draconian measures, our ‘legal entitlement’ really disappeared way back in 1996 with the introduction of conditionality for the first time, though in theory it was always conditional on being ‘available for work’ it was largely taken on our own say so back in the old days of the UB 40, (I even once had a postal claim – visited the dole office once every 3 moths to pick up a new signing book and post paid envelopes until about 1984 when they decided we could pay for our own stamps!). In 1996 when Jobseeker’s allowance was introduced, those little booklets where we had to record out jobsearch activity were introduced. There was some opposition to it, but it was pretty muted, and to be honest, it was hardly difficult to record our jobsearch in the booklet, even though it was the thin end of the wedge, softening us up for the kill, which seems to be happening in a real way now. Conditionality has now been taken to an absurd level, and 40 years ago would probably have been seen as something fitting as the subject of an absurdist Monty Python sketch.

sib..agreed, we the british, are doing what we do best, hiding behind the sofa, we are in a state of denial…or denied state! state of shock.
in brazil transport fares rise and they take to the streets…we hold onto long goned values..of british justice and fairplay, which seems increasingly likely to have always been a myth…they blame the sick for their symptoms..and the unemployed for unemployment….these bitter truths are hard to face…poverty enablers abound…the new money is in feeding off of human misery…what is the primary welfare legislation and how is this joined to the “secondary legislation”…ie legal entitlement remains untouched, but conditionality is imposed over this…3rd party company’s (ngo’s and private contractors), and recalibrate diagnosis to blame victim of need, for being in need…we are now put in the absurd position of having to prove, sickness and unemployment actually exist…where is gwen, and does she have a blog? now instead of relieving poverty, benefits system is now being used to cause it…

I was told that once at an interview I was at! I am applying myself for jobs I am not suited to as well in the vain hope of something. I also have the kicker of having a learning difficulty which makes it difficult and possibly unsafe for fellow workers in the likes of Tesco, poundland etc as if I do things too quickly, my brain just doesn’t register I have done the task and I go into a panic!!

Even when I was working for 35 hours a week I wasn’t actually working for every minute of those 35 hours. How anyone could possibly spend 35 hours a week looking for work escapes me? What are you supposed to do? Log onto Universal Jobmatch at 9.00 a.m., and look for work until 1.00 p.m., have an hour for lunch and then repeat the process from 2.00 p.m., until 5.00 p.m? EVERY WEEKDAY? Is there enough work in the world to enable anyone to be THAT busy? I mean this is utter fucking madness isn’t it? Nobody fathered by man and born of woman could fulfil a requirement like that!

How many MPs actually “work” 35 hours a week? Hoban has already admitted he knows nothing about the benefits system so how can he do any actual work apart from telling lies about the people that needs benefits? Well it,must be tiring propping up a bar in Westminster thinking up your next set of lies or expenses scam.

What an hour for lunch, no they wont allow that, they will expect you to take your computer with you to the toilet, Thats the point set it up with unrealistic goals, then when you fail them you arent doing enough and sanction time..so goodbye

That time-table you suggested isn’t too different to the 30 hrs pw jobsearch we had to do on the New Deal 4-odd years ago. The centre I attended was run by some relic who was ex-Rhodesian army, so you can guess what kind of regime HE ran. He was a self-regarding bully who dropped dead of cancer shortly after he had me kicked off the course for not being sufficiently in awe of him, so who had the last laugh? (Not that I would normally wish that on anyone. I didn’t have to. It seems the man upstairs had evidently had enough of him, too!)

Realistically, the only way most people will be able to fulfil their 35 hr commitment is by sending out huge amounts of speculative applications.

So expect a backlash from HR departments and recruitment agencies who suddenly find themselves receiving hundreds of unsolicited emails from local jobseekers each week. (Although the smart ones will, of course, just get the IT dept to play around with the email filters to ensure any unsolicited CVs go straight into the trash.)

On the plus side, at least they’re acknowledging that voluntary work actually is a work related activity. Which hopefully means that jobseekers undertaking relevant voluntary work will no longer be forced to give it up to attend irrelevant short term workfare placements.

Lastly, I just hope libraries are ready to cope with the number of jobseekers competing for internet access, and have robust systems in place to ensure everyone gets their fair share of time. (That’s a bit of a personal gripe of mine at the moment – I get rather fed up having to hang around for ages trying to grab a computer to look for work when half of them seem to be hogged by people watching skateboarding dogs on Youtube or playing Farmville. And I’m lucky in that my local library actually has a substantial number of computers, rather than the mere handful you’d get at small town branch.)

Cliff, whilst I agree with your sentiments about voluntary work qualifying as work related activity……I hate to be cynical about these things but I’m sure they will make sure that it has to be ‘approved’ and will also be policed in exactly the same way as job search activity.

I do the reception one day a week at my local Citizens’ Advice Bureau. I’m certain that doing that 35 hrs pw, if the CAB actually had that size of gap in the rota to fill, wouldn’t be good enough for the DWP ‘cos they wouldn’t be satisfied that it was sufficiently onerous for the purposes of squeezing the spirit out of us entirely!

The local JC+ here has one terminal for public use for jobsearch. It’s a small town. At present it’s necessary to pre-book at least 2 weeks in advance (half hour daily) to ensure a place. You can book a maximum of one hour per session. If it’s busy now, which it most certainly is, what is it going to be like come October? The bane of a user’s life is how many sessions are double-booked and how irritated some claimants can become about the person who has the session booked first. Interesting times ahead.

why don’t they leave people alone, it’s a form of hassle, worry, and one big con, so they say its to save money, why don’t their greed stop, most people want to work, for a decent living, may help them, but not the low wages that they pay, employing foreign people they may except cheap wages, but they soon Cotten on, and do a second class service, they are not soft touches, the money they make goes back to their countries where it’s worth double, so the people who were born and bread in England suffer, and treated as criminals, and scrounges, saying that the government would say that, they go by their own standards, which is low, in my mind, and what they dish out.

Is allowing people to do voluntary work actually a plus though? It’s of course fine that volunteering for jobs that were always the kind of work that was voluntary, but now that private companies have cottoned on that they can recruit ‘volunteers’ to do shelf-stacking in supermarkets they won’t create paid jobs, not even the god awful minimum wage jobs that they are notorious for.

Last time I signed on my attention was drawn by my advisor to the fact that the Folk Museum of Wales was looking for volunteer workers, presumably to work as custodians. Normally this has been paid seasonal work, but now it seems that even the National Museum of Wales has cottoned on to the fact that they can get workers for free. However, that particular scheme is unlikely to deliver the goods, as there is a very reasonable requirement to be able to speak Welsh to work with the public in that institution.

As that museum is just outside of Cardiff, (where about an eighth of the population speaks Welsh) there are going to be very few, if any, applicants for those posts, as Welsh speakers are usually employed by government, media and the public sector in general in this area.

Volunteering may well get the JCP off our backs, but it’s also achieving exactly what the government wants. This is Cameron’s Big Society manifest.

Not sure,
Last night all my mates sent this ad round to eachother and a similar one in England working as a costumed industrial mill worker/weaving machine operator. It was forwarded around several of our lists/groups (textile crafts).
Despite most of us working or living in other parts of the country. However, of those that are in the right areas and some that are within driving distance of same (and most in the groups in Wales speak Welsh), many have already applied for one or both of these jobs.

The apprentice one is more likely to go to a school leaver who speaks Welsh (compulsory in schools), age 16-18, who has no criminal record and a clean record of behaviour, ie not violent or drunk. If they ever pay someone for the job, employing young people means their pay is lowest.

It’s certainly possible for this to be the case, though I’m unlcear as to what you mean by ‘most of the groups in Wales speak Welsh’. Most people (95% +) in the South East Wales area that would be within the 90 minutes travelling time do not speak Welsh, despite small areas where the percentage hits the low tens, and one area where it reaches just under 16%.

Though Welsh is indeed compulsory in Welsh schools to age 16, in those schools that are not Welsh-medium (that is most subjects are taught through the medium of Welsh) the attainment levels in the language are not high, and more often than not far from anything like fluency.

Even those who have received their entire education through the medium of Welsh often struggle a few years after leaving full-time education, (my Workfare jobcoach is a case in point) due to the fact that in much of Wales, and certainly the South East, (which would include the entire 90 minutes travelling time for those jobs at St Fagans) Welsh is not an everyday medium of communication unless one is working in a Welsh speaking environment. There are unemployed Welsh speakers, and I am one, but I’m hardly typical.

That I have extreme difficulty accessing services from statutory bodies in Cardiff indicates to me that there are few unemployed fluent Welsh speakers available for any job, (it’s often a ‘desirable’ skill in many public sector, and some private sector jobs) that requires it. Indeed, my Welsh speaking JCP advisor, (who has his job partially on the strength that he is a fluent Welsh speaker, one of only two in that central Cardiff office, though there are a few others who have some ability, but who are not fluent enough to be able to deal with me) has suggested that I look on the Welsh language job vacancy sites, (rather redundantly, because I was doing that already) as there is much less competition for those jobs, what few there are.

Should clarify: “most of the people in the majority of the networks (groups) I was talking about, that are in Wales as opposed to in England (textile crafts type groups) are able to speak or speak some, Welsh. Most are above the age of the age-groups being recruited for apprentice type jobs. So are unlikely despite their skill and interest, in gaining said jobs, as funding is only for young people.”

This is ridiculous! I feel even more pressure now (I’m unemployed sadly).
How can they say hand CV’s to shops in town? You just get told nowadays that everything is done online & that they don’t take CV’s in person anymore.
I already feel bad enough for not having a job, now this possibility too. I can see more people getting ill through these changes especially with depression.

What, in THIS country? It’s never gonna happen! If we couldn’t manage it over the banking crisis, we never will. We’re too doped up on conformist, aspirational lifestyle/status-chasing and full of self-loathing, outdated cap-touching deference to the ruling class.

People in the main tend to not be aware of their own history. Chartism for one. The worlds first mass working class movement. The ruling class turned London into an armed encampment when faced with hostility from many who got their picks out and others marched with loaded rifles. The Plug Riots, the Luddites who fought bravely when their livelihoods were under threat. The Peasants Revolt, The English Civil War, the Diggers, the Levellers. Army mutinies. I could go on. I’ll end with the Poll Tax riots – that put the shits up the Tory’s and put paid to Margaret Thatcher dictatorship. This after the major defeat of the miners in 1984/5. To think, if the miners had the solidarity they deserved back then we wouldn’t be in the position we are in now. People were suckered into buying shares from Syd and the “right to buy” their council house. Playing into the mantra of we’re all middle class now – the neo-liberal project that promised “trickle down” and instead wrought upon us the worlds worst ever economic crisis. Are we going to pay for a crisis not of your own making, or not?

I like some of the comments about sending off as many C.V’s as possible it will get up the noses of the employers after all there are only so many jobs for us.Has anyone friends with computers who like searching for say jobs?
Tell them your email and UJM password and let them do it no one the wiser!!
The job centre site will take less than a hour a day so it should be fun to find out how they are going to monitor us for the other 34 hours per week.We need to support each other a ‘Buddy system ‘don’t them the government Grind you down try to find ways around the problems let’s have fun they are expecting us to be scared they are loving it … Turn the tables i am not going to be their victim in this game.

More on (should that read ‘moron’?) UJM being shite:
In JCP today I told a woman from JCP that I’ve been locked out of my UJM account for months and so has everyone else on my group at work programme, and now the WPP staff can’t get in either. I told them AGAIN that UJM is causing me to be spammed with thousands of junk emails. She said ‘you are the only one reporting any problems’. I nearly said, that I knew it was obvious she had been told to say that. Or lose her job. Lying through her teeth like all of them. Next person comes up will be told the same thing. I asked how I open my email if 3 times out of 4 I can’t due to all the spam, and important stuff is bouncing back or going into Junk/Delete, including stuff from my friends? I said I can only access the public face of UJM, can’t apply for anything, it has no jobs I can do. And when I click Apply on ones I can’t do, it doesn’t work. And last time UJM emailed me, every single job it sent me, the jobs had been taken off the system by DWP.
And every job in previous emails was not in my area and/or not in anything I’m qualified to do/able to do. She said they ARE local jobs. I said it wants me to be a truck driver in Liverpool, most times. She said the local description is based on 90 minutes travelling time and assumes all jobseekers have a car.
I said well I don’t have a car or a driving licence. And some jobs are further than Liverpool, like Inverness and Plymouth and China (hardly local). And there is no way that even in a fast car you can get in 90 minutes to Liverpool. Plus the petrol would cost twice what the best-paid of the jobs pays per week! And it assumes all roads are straight, flat, utterly deserted with no traffic, no roadworks, no accidents…. no tailbacks/gridlock.The silly cow said ‘get a car’. I said, as you know I am not allowed to drive because of severe epilepsy (I didn’t add ‘….you retarded used condom that has been used by George Osborne to fuck a donkey’).

Is there a maximum IQ of 100 for working in a JCP? Seems like it!

Anyway this Jobcentre ‘talent’ (!) pointed out that jobseekers all have cars and can all drive these days so I was wrong about having epilepsy. Doctor and psychic too huh?! Is there no end to her talents? What a donut!
(Oh so if I have a mystery car I can’t drive and don’t know about, where do I keep it and how do I pay for it? Please tell me where my car is so I can sell it so I can buy some frigging FOOD.)

Apparently all staff everywhere in JCP in the UK are ordered to say to everyone there are no problems with UJM at all. I said, how do you get to these jobs if there isn’t a car? She said you must get there by other means.
As in magic beans? Magic carpet? Seven league boots? Flying monkeys?
A train isn’t affordable as even cheap tickets would be 4 days salary gone per week instantly, leaving you with a day’s pay for a week’s work, and utterly knackered all week – and cheap tickets are rare. The bus: To get to Liverpool from here on a bus would take up to 3 days and involve a lot of hours in bus terminals.

I said it is a design flaw in UJM that you can’t put ‘I don’t have a car’ and change the distance to walking/bus. Also why has UJM altered my personal details?

The reason she came up to me was that at 11:40am apparently EVERY Jobpoint machine in the UK -I’m surprised it’s not on here yet- crashed! and was still bust at 2pm when she threw me out. I was told by different staff to wait in order to obey my mandate to be there all day long on my signing day. I’d just gone on the Jobpoint when it happened. I said how do I do my mandate. Before throwing me out she did say that it’d be bust all day but I’d not be SAnctioned (SA as in Sturmabteilung). Oh gee that’s big of you! There are no other places for it, so they want me to spend all of tomorrow in the same JCP now as well.

They make you stay in the Jobcentre all day when you sign on? Is that even legal? How can an “advisor” mandate someone to stay in the Jobcentre all day? From 9:30 till 5PM? That is incredible, and I must say I feel for you.

What’s the betting IDS or Hoban or some other fruitcake in the DWP decide all unemployed should do the same?

Not from 9:30, 2 hours later. Till 5pm. Apparently the only time WPP and JCP talked to eachother, and they agreed it. In the event, I was so ill I couldn’t go, and then my landlord kept me in. In the JCP there was no guarantee the machines would be fixed by Tuesday. I was ill as I’d not had my medicine Monday because I had to leave for signing on, after no sleep; and ill from being at the jobcentre. I’d have been worse if standing for 5 and a half hours, as usual, though. Today my back is worse but today I have to face the music about not coming to the jobcentre Tuesday. They could do me for that and do me for not using the jobpoint on the correct day Monday (not working) and Tuesday (above). JCP opens at 9 and that’s when they wanted me in on Tuesday.
Because THEIR shit computers were broken!
So instead of wasting one day of my time they now waste 3. If I’d not been trying to get well enough to get out in time to go back on Tuesday, I’d not have perhaps got quite as sick, but in any case had other things I was supposed to do! Another reason they threw me out on Monday, was that an earlier member of staff brought a chair so I could sit till 2pm instead of stand 2 and a half hours doing nothing. I really needed it. But other staff then objected to me having a chair and accused me of taking it! There are normally no chairs allowed and no sitting on the floor is allowed. For health and safety, contradiction in terms. I told the lady that got me the chair, while I wait can I write letters and read my mail and stuff? She said yes.; So I started and (Microsoft Paperclip: nazi voice: “It seems like you are writing a letter”) later the bitchy woman above came over and hassled me. She said I shouldn’t be writing a letter and made me stop. Do they have mini cameras by the phones or what? And then she asked me about UJM etc. so I made the mistake of telling the truth.

when my time comes I might use my 34 hours to travel to London just to meet ids and give him something millions would be proud of’ and Prison would be a great way of spending the rest of my life instead of starving on the streets

as by law you have to tell the truth on your CV if you have an illness or dissability start your CV with a full and honest acount of how you illness or dissability will provent you from being of any use to the potencial employer including the likely hood of your condition leaving yourself or others open to serious illness or injury and leaving the company open to prosecution ect ect ,thay will be more than happy to offer you a possition dont you
think .

I have ‘significant health problems’ so would need that declared and the fuckers could be in serious trouble if they then tried to lie about it. In fact the jobseeking activities all make my CFS/ME worse. And running there makes me tired for the rest of the day, then I had to walk here miles to find a free computer.

Is it not just likely that you will be required to walk your local town centre, with a sign hung around your neck, saying will work for nothing or food or just a pat on the head. Zero hours contracts preferred.

An advertiser called to say that an entity called ‘I.D.S.’ urgently needs rimming, but the applicant must have extremely good eyesight, as it is extremely difficult differentiating said client’s mouth from his arsehole.

Sorry for my foul mouth of late (well keyboard), I’ve been reading Matthew Parris’ book of insults. And I sort of paraphrased from some Ancient Greek insults. The book is ‘Scorn’ and is a small hardback of 200-plus pages of different insults.
Last night I ran to the computers (didn’t know they’d crash, so my attempt to watch anything was thwarted), and just as I left my house, a bunch of airhead-looking drunk girls were rude to me (size) and laughing. I was thinking ‘I’m in a hurry /they’re not worth it/they’ll be flipping burgers soon/ I don’t have time or energy… but part of me feels like saying (not in the book but inspired by it) “When I work out which of you’s turn it is to borrow the brain cell, I would have known which one of you to address, but I see now that none of you had one to lend out in the first place.”.’
(Or a version they might have some ability to understand). I ignored them. I ran on past them, and got here on time; but the computers weren’t working, so I missed the programme.

You know the form of divination by flicking through a book and seeing what you land on? Well ‘the government’ could be the Question, and last time I flicked it (Tuesday morning in between being really quite ill), the page it landed on was (Answer) : “May you get fucked by a donkey.”

On the planet where the HQ of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation is, they used to have a giant sign with the company motto on it. (‘Share and Enjoy’) It was so heavy it buried itself halfway. The top half of the letters was sticking out, but in the local language it read: ‘Go Stick your Head in a Pig.”

Anthem of the SCC:
“Share and enjoy, share and enjoy/Journey through life with a plastic boy/
Or girl by your side, Let your pal be your guide/
And when it breaks down, and starts to annoy/
Or grinds when it moves, and gives you no joy/
Cause it’s eaten your hat, and had sex with your cat,/
Flings oil on the wall, and ripped off your door/
And you get to the point you can’t stand any more/
Bring it to us – we won’t give a fig/
We’ll tell you….: GO STICK YOUR HEAD IN A PIG.”
(Douglas Adams)

“Self sufficiency” is good one. The working class have had to make their own way in this world. The number of hoops I’ve had to jump through I’ve lost count off and JCP didn’t provide any of them. Just punitive measures to give you a sense of powerlessness in your own worth. Meanwhile, the rich and powerful, along with the secret state who are the ones who rule lavish it up and ensure the bulk of their wealth ends up in a tax haven. The City of London is a corrupt institution, run by criminals for criminals. The amount of laundered criminal assets, including drug money, piped through the millionaires, sorry billionaires row, is astonishing. A fair amount goes up the nostrils of these greedy fuckers who are still making “loads of money” out of their lust for more money that eventually crashed the system. Oh, and it ain’t gonna get any better for Joe and Jane public EVER until we get rid of all the sisters and start controlling our own lives. Start locally and ffs if I hear anymore scapegoating of people, any people just like you and me I’ll just turn around and look with disdain and say “friend of a banker are we?”. It not just bankers either who are fault here. They were allowed to operate in a system that goes from crisis to crisis, ever deeper. That system is of course CAPITALISM. It has its dynamism of course and did bring us out of the “dark ages”, but now its time is spent. The last major crisis bought about a barbarity that had human beings shovelling other human beings into large pits. There were also those, the scapegoats, women, the elderly, the disabled and children for Christ sake who were gassed in their millions, or experimented on and if they were lucky they ended up enslaved in concentration camps. If it has happened before it can happen again. Don’t let it. It is the young now who need to organise themselves from this brutality. SOLIDARITY is the key. Take it and open the door to a better life. One of your choosing and not some petty bureaucrat.

Absolutely fucking mental! Millions of people are going to be chasing jobs that don’t exist. Every small business that advertises for a cleaner or something is going to get 10,000 CVs to wade through. Hasn’t anyone in this government got a brain? Why hasn’t IDS been sacked yet? The man is a fucking idiot!

No, nobody in this government has a brain. Extreme authoritarianism and basic competence are not noted bedfellows; indeed, they couldn’t possibly be.

IDS hasn’t been sacked because (a) Cameron is scared that he’d lead a revolt from the right (imagine it! Cameron, the only Tory leader to come anywhere close to winning an election in almost two decades, scared of the single most abject failure in that position ever to have upheld the Peter Principle in winning it); (b) his hyper-authoritarianism is entirely in keeping with the philosophy of the rest of the government – Lib Dems included, the fucking bastards; and (c) he’s needed to carry the can for it all going horribly wrong when it does, so he can be replaced by Chris Grayling – who will do even worse.

This Coalition government are like kids in a coconut shy with bags on their heads – their philosophy is : ‘if we keep throwing were bound to hit something’ – meaning at some point were gonna get something right. – Yeah dream on – not in this lifetime!

They can’t sack him yet. I bet there wouldn’t be too many applicants to take his place. I’m guessing they will leave him in post until UC is embedded and failing. I give him less than a year before he has reaped his ‘rewards’ and he is shuffled out.

If i recall correctly there are approximately 1.3 million jobs vacant in the UK. There are 3 million confirmed unemployed and god knows how many unemployed that are not signing on for various reasons. If everyjob was filled in the next hour there would still be circa 2 million unemployed people.

If Scotland does go independant and becomes it’s own self governing country, IDS would love that and it would be an excuse for him to say – “Unemployment down by tens of thousands” – because overnight the unemployment figures for Scotland would dissappear.

There are nowhere near 1.3 million jobs available! Even if you believed the bullshit spouted by IDS and his fuckwits there are about 0.5 million. And where do they get there stats from?…..the fairy jobmother?!!! If you look on UJ site you will see thousands of jobs listed at least twice, and if you look a bit deeper it is not unusual to see them posted ten times or more.

Then take out all of the ‘self employed’ catalogue distributor ‘jobs’, the Avon Representative ”jobs’ (posted eighteen times every week within a 5 mile radius), then remove the jobs posted three times on the same recruitment sites……and the same jobs posted another three times on four or more other websites. Then take out the jobs you already know don’t exist (because you’ve phoned the company!) and you’d be lucky to come up with 0.2million jobs.

So that’s about 200,000 jobs let’s realistically say…..for a truthfully realistic figure of how many unemployed? I cannot find a sensible answer to that one, but I’d guess at circa 4.2 million. Add in the number of under employed and the figures just go berserk!

all you need to do is check the UJ reporting tools down the bottom to get the stats on how many live jobs are actually on UJM vs the amount of claimants.
It is quite surprising what you can find using that tool.

Regards Universal Job Match…..ppl must be made aware of how this system is operating presently. I asked about this at my jobcenter, and was told, …yeah sure you can go without logging in into system, but since April, anyone who chooses not to log in as opposed to merely browsing the site, will have to prove paper eveidence. The only thing they will accept will soon be actual web page printouts. ppl would find they had to print out every web page they went to look for work. That is how I understand it. That simply is impossible, but what’s gonna be required come October.

And what of those places where there is no internet access? I mean quite a few rural areas have no internet at all. What are they supposed to do?
This thing about spending 35 hrs a week looking for work??? What garbage! Employers are already being snowed by applicants. As for going round shops etc, that is unacceptable. If a shop wants someone, they will advertise for it. They are never going to take just anyone off the streets. Once in a while we hear of ppl who do get lucky, but that is an exception. But “ids” thought it was “a good thing” that 1700 ppl applied for 8 jobs I think it was in a mid England coffee shop. “Shows ppl are looking for work” I think it might have been Nottingham.
We really need to get rid of this Regime of evil Satanists of NEW NAZIS….
But alas, they now have a little Mussolini hanger oner…Milliband….. Milli has to go too. Labour, if it really wants to get back to power anytime soon, would do well to get a new leader, and a whole bunch of new MPs.
Either the Michael Meachers should leave and start their own party or they should cause a revolution in the one they have. Otherwise, they might as well just retire now, because they are wasting their time and ours.

What’s Mystic Meg doing these days, and would she like to help people in rural areas? By predicting future jobs and transmitting them by telepathy into the heads of 9 million unemployed people, then receiving their instant applications and CV’s by return THINK, and converting that data into hardcopy for the jobcentres and employers?

Eric: how about my ex housemate, a top level surgeon and consultant and hospital-manager? Having to stack supermarket shelves; and wipe bums in an old people’s home; because ‘oh she’s the wrong colour and from India’? It was right after they stopped non-EU doctors getting jobs if they could be done by UK or EU applicants as first priority. In fact she was here as the spouse plus kids of a mature student so had not come independently looking for work, but with her family, and wanted to earn income while here. And back in India she’s the breadwinner, unusual in India – and their nation’s status quo could become ours, under the assumptions made in Universal Credit. Paid to one partner only, probably the man! (‘People and their wives’ – Wildcat Anarchist Comics by Donald Rooum, the one where Wildcat trashes all sexist posters. Till her friends want to smash the sex shop, and Wildcat says she likes the sex shop.)

I applied to costa coffee incidentally and they said I was too old and also overqualified. Fucking Jobcentre then said I shouldn’t be so old on my application form! Um lie? Cause if I was any older I’d be several years pre-Thatcher, and if I was any younger I’d have a clue about how to work all the instantly disposable electronic garbage seemingly welded to most of them these days….
That’s clever anyway: because they’ll see from your NI that you are a different age. And then you’ve lied so it’s not just a guarantee of not being hired, but of having the police called. Fraud right?

Watched a video of a sober man arrested in Arizona for DUI, but he was sober and his eyes were bloodshot from swimming, to prepare for hip surgery. In fact he was arrested for driving while black. Google it. It’s on the same page of video clips as the one I went there to see: A woman in USA sexually assaulted by a male policeman, and then arrested for complaining, and her child taken away. In court!

If we are the wrong colour should we be a different colour to get a job?
“Michael Jackson proved it can be done so go out and get white and get a job”. If we are disabled? “Broken spine? No you pathetic scrounger, you are not trying hard enough. [produces one of those little cellophane fish that curls up in your hand, the kind you get in crackers] Concentrate hard enough and pray to Jesus Christ, and verily you shall be healed! Here’s a skip, throw away your wheelchair and walk home, we’ve just prayed your spine normal and it’s now mended. Get an early night because at 7am you’re lifting sandbags for 10 hours a day. Until you die.”

I understand that Universal Credit may ask employers for feedback on:
 my applications for jobs
 job interviews I’m invited to So no buggering up the interview.. that is if they even bother to check with the Thousands of people applying

Can’t print (no printer), or can’t afford to print. Also printer when there is one often doesn’t work. I don’t get a choice as UJM locks me out of my own account so I have to go to public version and can’t apply.
THEY should try using it themselves and see what a pile of crap it is.

“UJM is a SANCTION MACHINE” like the ATOS run disability assessment is a disqualifying procedure.
We should see it at further steps in the dismantling of the Welfare State. Eventually nobody will be sufficiently sick or job-searching to qualify for any benefit. Each man for himself, struggling at the bottom and new feudal lords at the top.

Funny old world, when something most people would struggle to eke out to four hours a week is supposed to be a full time job, but running the country is something that leaves you with oodles of free time…

So, they are just going to waste shitloads of everyone’s time and life. Already in my area, employers have been appearing on the front pages of our local paper pleading with people to stop applying for their jobs because there are too many applicants …!

Jeremy, are we supposed to feel sorry for those unfortunate overworked HR departments? From what I’ve seen from my job searching they don’t appear to do so badly out of it!. I wish I had qualified in that crap (but I’m only an architect!)……..the work would no doubt bore me shitless, but I think I could adapt to that……given adequate (re)training!

It looks as if they are trying to force claimants to use Universal Jobmatch just to justify it’s miserable existence. I never use it. And always print off jobs that I have applied for elsewhere as proof.

Maybe that & to allow quicker/less labour-intensive/more automated ways to remove huge sums of money & support the ‘reason’ for UJ’s conception/creation … (“I’ve created a monster!”).

Has all of the withheld money (£££s) been put into a locked safe (for a rainy day)? Has anyone counted it recently and has it been gathering dust/interest in a communal bank account for future benefit needs/spent on new carpets/coffee-makers placed for JC Plus offices?

Simply put, yes, it’s all sitting in more than one account like the £35billion currently sitting unused in HMT’s Debt Management Office; £1 billion from TV licenses paid 6m in advance and so on. There’s Quantitative Easing which has poured 375bn into the banks and that may well be increased to 500bn in the future – there and many other figures in the articles on

Further at http://think-left.org/2012/08/18/what-is-george-osborne-playing-at/
“we have a situation where over a third of the outstanding National debt is sitting in the Government owned Bank and another section of the Government, the Debt Management Office – an arm of HMT – is paying interest to the Bank which is again just sitting there unused.”
And again :-
“The second part of QE is the insane bit. Sitting in the wholly publicly owned Asset Purchase Facility is £325 billion of outstanding government debt. The same debt Cameron says it is critical we eradicate.”

So yes all the “money” that the Gidiot Osborne is claiming “we” owe and “we” have to endure the obscenity of the austerity programme is actually a cover story for the wholly political action to trash the welfare state to a point where it may never recover.

He may of course decide to use some of it to buy favour with the his real constituents (banks, business, rich) before the next election
QED.

@Nightingale ~ Thanks for those sums which seem fairly clear, even for less than numerically-literate people (like me). Even us lesser mathematicians have been wondering though – about the missing money. Going to read the links in a bit more depth (read them) a bit later, and probably weep.

Austerity-cloaking-welfare-state-trashing (“It’s not a recession, it’s a robbery”) unfortunately it all makes perfect (evil) sense. If it wasn’t immediately obvious to everybody earlier (it always seemed a dodgy old strategy anyway, for several reasons – not least its tendency to destroy lives -but not ‘across the board’) sadly it ought to be now.

I know it sounds pretty stupid, but the way things are going it’s surprising that this government don’t make it ‘mandatory’ for the unemployed to wear something like the yellow badge that jewish people were forced to wear by the nazis.

Man in pub, ‘The Olden Days’:
“you think you’ve got it bad? T for Thief? A for Adulterer? You don’t know how lucky you are?!”
The Adulterer buys him a pint. “So how did you get the ‘DF’ on your head then?”
“It stands for Dog-Fucker.”

Mr No, it is not stupid. It will come to pass. Already now some “concessions” like (in London) the discount on the Oyster Card requires a special unemployed ID to be shown. How long will it take before suitable ID will be needed for foodbanks, prescriptions, etc, etc ?

So, jumping through all these hoops is magically going to make a job appear? Are they serious?.Constantly badgering businesses or shops with constant CV’s & enquires is quite likely to be considered harassment! Which there is a law against. And the possibility of a prison sentence.
Maybe that’s IDS’s plan for the unemployed – prison work camps.

Ah yes, I remember being a kid and having me old mum serve up a hot, steaming slice of fresh British pizza, roast spuds and gravy on a Sunday afternoon. Try getting that anywhere now the foreigners have taken over the old British-run pizza parlours.

Unfortunately the tomatoes were deported to Mexico, and the potatoes to south America. The stuff that makes the bread rise was removed, as we used to make gritty tooth-busting flatbread that could only be cooked outside. So no deep-dish or stuffed-crust for you. As for the cheese, well we started out with goats and sheep before cows, but it was once far too cold for goats or sheep, so we can’t have cheese (NO, Baldrick, you may be Sir Baldrick now, but health and safety won’t let you volunteer to donate your knob-cheese!). You can’t have just meat on top because that is ‘pide’, Turkish pizza. Anyway, try the traditional roast then. Remember no potatoes. Gravy isn’t that old, how about the sauce the Romans made from manky old rotten fish heads? But you can’t be having none of that eyetie crap right? No pasta or rice either then.
Cancel the Turkey, that came from America. Uexolotl in Nahuatl.

Turnips for tea, anyone?
We’re not sure turnips made it through the ice age so we’ll get back to you on this one.
Ice for tea then? Dating back to traditional Britain, covered by miles of thick glacier.

how many hours are we currently expected to spend looking for work, about 8 or so? they won’t expect 35hrs a week. it’s called fear-mongering; they introduce something completely absurd, then after everybody is scared they will more than happily accept something only partly absurd such as 16hrs a week jobsearch which was probably what they expected in the first place but this way they keep the people happy in the meantime, time after time, until the next time.

I was told on Jobseeker’s Allowance I was supposed to spend 20 hours a week “actively seeking work”. Apart from glancing at a list of jobs I have applied for no Jobcentre clerk has questioned the number of hours I have put in. How could that be invigilated anyway? Unless you turn up somewhere an clock in and out how the heck can anybody check up on the number of hours you’ve spent looking for work in any week? It’s bollocks.

I have a horrible feeling they will call you in each day until you have done the hours (especially if you tell them you have no computer or phone at home – this is a double edged sword with this situation).
And the bastards will as well.
Imagine 7 hours a day stuck in the job centre using UJ/UC and not able to take a break/lunch etc or face a sanction.

I wouldn’t mind if they did get me in everyday, i’ve actually told them to start up a jobclub, to HELP us find work, cos they are no help what so ever, infact they’re a hinderence, the JobCentre are meant to help us find work, they don’t do that, i’ve never met such a miserable brain dead bunch in my god damn life.
Truth is the Gov actually won’t fund a jobclub, i was told “these things cost money” !!!!
So come on DWP make me come in daily, where your delightfully helpful staff will have me up and working in a good job in no time……and by good job, i mean a real one, not temporary, not a mickey mouse leaflet pusher…..a F*CKING PROPER JOB.

I think someone is seriously having a laugh at our expense, flooding their shit site with bogus spam jobs, jobs that say they one thing but are another (rip offs and scams), then impose sanctions on the reams of people bouncing like a yoyo tween benefits and shit jobs, i think we’re being deliberately provoked, the pensions aint enough now they’re coming for the social security.

Please don’t use the word ‘invigilated’ – it conjures up images of rows of desks & someone walking up and down between them, timing how long anyone spend if they need to go to the loo while making certain they don’t talk to anyone around them …

Universal jobmatch on jobcentre computers is a joke anyway. I tried to download and save my cv to upload to jobmatch…but the computers wont let ypu do this. I dont have a home computer therefore dont have any other way except to pay for travel and internet access..ive worked all my life until I suffered from a mental health issue last year. Ive been made to feel like scum by the staff at my local office. Funny thing is when I was working I was earning much more than them in a job that required much more brain cells…but because Im single and ended up ill ive been tarred with a brush I dont like. ive been looking for work to no avail. I get 71.50 a week. This has to cover utilities food car insurance and fuel (no public transport in my area) and I now also have to find another 11 to pay towards my rent. I got my property when in a relationship. ..this broke down and he moved put two years ago…so now im being punished for my relationship not working. ..im not mentally well enough for work. ..severely depressed and have borderline personality disorder. ..which greatly affects how I communicate with folks. But because I was unable to pay bills when signed off I ended up even more depresses with the stress of choosing whether to eat…heat my home or pay for my car ti be insured so I can get to interviews. Im barely eating as cant afford to…bedroom tax is ridiculous and is putting single people in my position into the riak of being malnutritioned. Im alreafy down to 7 stone and cant really affors to lose any more weight…but without my car I cant get to interviews…perhaps if mps salaries were capped to max 60k per year and no allowances given thwn maybe there would be more in the pot. Time to rip it all down and start again…stop employing non uk nationals before eu nationals. Give us brits a chance. ..were not all workshy…but sometimes thinga like illness happen…why should I be punished because of being ill…im going to college soon in hope that I can perhaps get a new career. I think bedroom tax should only be applied if you have claimed housing bebefit for a period of over 2 year’s…because thats proof you dont want to work. My doc wanted me to stay signed off qork and go to therapy…but I simply cannot afford to otherwise I am going to end up involuntarily anorexic.

Lotte hun, don’t let that crappy little jobcentre and the mediocre selection of staff available get you down. College sounds like a great idea for you as it looks like your observational and writing skills are being wasted at the moment. Have you thought about blogging? I would read it.

Thanks codeword. ..perhaps I shall start blogging…I have opinions on everything lol…and I wont let them get me down. I love filling in my jobsearch book…I get a new one each time I sign on because have filled the last one… 🙂 x

I’d love to hear your opinions and I bet loads of other people would, too; you seem quirky, upbeat and funny. And a bit of a smartypants, I bet you get up to all sorts and don’t take any shit off the idiots 😉

The unemployed will also have to be prepared to travel 1.5 hours to work each way- up to a 3 hour commute. I go 20 minutes each way yo work on the train and it costs me a tenner a day, and an extra hours childcare.

90 mins each way could mean I would be expected to look for work in London, and suck up the commute costs (£42 a day plus tube). The best bit is that under UC, I would have to do this for a minimum wage part time job- if I was job matched for it. Even full time at a low wage it would never cover these travel costs.

Forget about narrowing the search to a local, manageable area. 90 minutes each way. Imagine how far you will be expected to go. Scary times….

Blanco, I think you will find that the 90min. commute requirement is already in new claimant’s Jobseekers Agreements (it’s definitely in mine!) and has been the case since the DWP thought, in Oct 2012, that a far more stringent persecution of the unemployed would create more jobs!

Thankfully I havent had to sign on for about 15 years….. But through the course of my work I have come across some wicked sanctions being implied already. One client last week was sanctioned for 182 days- he didn’t attend an interview, 45 miles away, because he didn’t have the money to get there- 17 quid on the train. He called them to rearrange it.
I can’t even issue food bank vouchers to cover 6 months to him, as he can only have one a month.

At least working in homelessness I won’t be out of a job for a while! Although joking aside, the fall out from welfare reform, localism and homeless discharge changes, bedroom tax, benefit cap, and UC has left me and most of my colleagues stressed, drained, hopeless and resigned to to the rise of abject poverty and dispair…..

Homeless is going to rocket because landlords will most definately not take claimants of UC in my local area.

When the revolution comes, just remember that not all public sector employees are faceless bureaucrats, most if us are appalled and aghast by welfare reform.

Yes of course- that goes without saying. The appeal process takes a whole though. I am hopeful. I also have a desk full of DHP refusals to appeal. Since the bedroom tax came in, most of the DHP’s accepted seem to be going to counteract its effects, and the overall budget has been cut anyway.

The changes to legal aid terrify me. Housing and benefits issues may have to be done without specialist legal advice in future…..

Haven’t they withdrawn the travel to interview help now? How can they expect peope to travel up to 90 mins if they can’t afford the transport costs. Help to get a decent suit is also gone I believe. Benefits, JSA at least leaves zero money for extras such as travel. They then have the cheek to claim they are helping people back to work when they are doing the precise opposite. What kind of lunatics are running this country?

Watching Obama speak the other day it is obvious he has total contempt for Cameron and his divisive policies.

I told the divs that where a normal suit is £100 if you’re lucky (and you can’t own just one and wear the same one to work each day, and how to wash and dry and iron it?), I’d need one made to measure from scratch. That starts at several hundred pounds. And they don’t do shoes small enough either. DLA is meant to pay for the cost of clothes for us but of course, I don’t get DLA. It’s a farce. That’s the main sort of help I need, not a wheelchair or lift. Needless to say, aforementioned JCP and WPP divs immediately withdrew the ‘offer’ of a suit. Suit I can’t wear, wash, maintain, or have space for? thanks a bunch…. Like gym membership, no point. Don’t fit on any of the equipment and can’t lift the weights. Like parking. What good is a parking space, I don’t drive.

I have been unemployed since being made redundent last november, I did not choose to claim any Jobseekers allowence until late Februry 2013, as soon as April hit I was requested via a mandate to register for Universal Jobmatch, which I declined on eth basis that any joker can sign up as an employer and exploit the user

I myself tested this by signing up as an employer under the name “Mr Fake User” using the telephone number and address of my local jobcentre+ as my contact details and using a known disposable email providor, I was able to access the system as an employer for aprox 8hrs prior to my posting a ” Fake Job” which wa picked up as it was entitled “this is a fake job advert” , despite my proof (screenshots , print outs etc) they still sanctioned my benefit for 4 weeks – during which time I was still continuing to search for work via many sites – including regular visits to universal jokematch.

The requirement of having to register on UJM is in my mind unlawful as it fundamentally breaches principle 1 of the Data Protection Act regarding the consentual handling of a persons data (to which I do not know of any exceptions listed in the act (DPA) that refer to the jobseekers act of 1995)

by witholding funds it is extorting the claiment to sign up – which is akin to being held at teh end of a barrel of a gun being told to do somthing that you dont actually want to do.#

The current system is a gross over reaction to a few high profile cases enabled by someone that watches too many episodes of shameless.

As of today my sancton had lifted, although I was immediatly “advised” (threatened) that if I did not register that I would receive a further sanction for 13 weeks( real nice as I am a father of 3), I advised that I am appealing , and after a lengthy conversation with teh advisor and her manager tehy agreed to wait for teh result of my appeal… then issue teh mandate that will lead to the sanction.

Once my alledged “entitlement” of 26 weeks of contibution based JSA runs out , I will not be reclaiming, although I am unsure what I will do IF I am unable to secure a Job by then …

If your getting ‘Contribution Based JSA’ technically you shouldn’t be able to get a sanction, because the JSA for the first six months you are getting is money you have earned – if you understand what I mean.

At least you have had it agreed that the result of the appeal will mean the halting of the 2nd jobseeker’s direction, that is something.

The fact that you were able to post as an employer yourself really ought to be enough in itself though! It’d be good if you were to upload these screenshots if that was something you were willing to do?

There are some links that may be useful to your situation linked under the video below.

I received a letter from the DWP advising me that they had made a decision about a doubt concerning a jobseekers direction, and that they decided that the doubt nolonger applies, theat they will pay JobSeeker allowence and the first payment will INCLUDE the arrears due to me from the period that funds were withheld.

So this says to me that they can not enforce the sign up to Universal JobMatch as it is indeed in breach of the Data Protection act principle 1 of which there are no exclusions listed in regards to teh Jobseekers act 1995, of course they have not said this but the implication remains.

Wasn’t Universal Jobmatch introduced with that idea in mind, the intention being tracking cookies would be employed to monitor how long you spend on UJ, how many pages you click on, how long between clicks etc?

I CANT BELIEVE this, i just got scammed by a guy at the jobcentre before finding this, he refused to let me sign until i gave him my email address, claiming that it’s the ONLY way for me to prove i’m using their piece of shit site, i had to give it him publicly, with other jobseekers in earshot, i told him i felt violated….HE LAUGHED
What can i do, how can i get thos SOB fired?

Close on….. I’ve had many condescending remarks made to me by jobcentre staff, I made a formal complaint in writing, the said person no longer works there but I never got an official apology, stand up to the Bastards and give back as much shit as they dish out, you,re a human being not a tethered animal.

It is not mandatory for a person claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance to supply Jobcentre Plus with an email address and home telephone number. There are currently no plans for any third parties to be given direct access to accounts on Universal Jobmatch.

Close: Create a new UJM account with a different email addy. Take a copy of the FOI request advising that you don’t have to provide your email address into the Jobcentre on your next appointment. Advise that you wish to make a complaint about the advisor who lied to you and treated you disrespectfully; and that you now no longer wish the DWP to have access to your account as they have abused your trust.

I have made over 600 job applications on the UJ site since signing up in January, from that I have secured only one job interview, someone please tell me I’m not wasting my time! Btw, a total of 318 applicants applied for that job, what are my realistic chances?

And to a poster above, no, it is NOT an automatic switch from contribution based to income based, because, i just went two weeks with no money, they told me my contributions based was ending, but did NOT tell me i needed to reclaim, i only found out when i went to an advisor interview, i filled the form in immediately and the housing ben/ Ctax ben forms, but it’s too late, my housing association have now threatened me with eviction, 28 days notice, or face a £100 fine, even though i TOLD them what was going on, i now have a timer ticking above my god damn head, with two weeks left, and they STILL have not sorted my housing benfit claim, so if the council don’t hurry, i will get a £100 fine and court costs, 2 weeks i went without money, i had my son coming round to feed me FFS, i’m getting the income based now, but still no housing benefit. I am close to the edge

Your housing association fines you for being in arrears? Are they totally insane? Maybe get in touch with Inside Housing, it may be the industries ‘in house’ publication, but there are some old school housing people working on it who would be truly appalled at the way you are being treated – and maybe get in touch with Shelter too.

I was aware of how HAs have been becoming more and more corporatist, with an increasingly patronising and paternalistic approach to tenants, (I’ve been an HA tenant for 23 years) but I hadn’t realised that some now regard themselves as being able to fine people for perceived social failings such as not being able to pay the rent for perfectly legitimate reasons – notwithstanding that rents shouldn’t exist in the first place.

Take a letter in asking for a ‘payment on account’. HB will then have to provisionally assess within 14 days as long as you have provided everything you can. Also take proof you have reapplied for jsa and anything from your landlord. Then take the whole lot to your housing officer.

Payment on accounts MUST be requested in writing. The customer service end at hb won’t likely have heard of them before, so ask her to give you a receipt for your letter, and try to encourage him / her to speak to a hb team leader 🙂

“At least working in homelessness I won’t be out of a job for a while”, no but you should be on strike in solidarity with those you are denying food vouchers to and in opposition to the cruel system you are upholding.
You state “when the revolution comes remember we are not a pack of faceless bureaucrats”. Oh yes you are, you may be aghast at welfare reform and run ragged as you imply, but not prepared to stand up and be counted only give lip service opposition. The revolution should start with you lot you are at the (non) service end.

Okay, and what do you suggest I do? I already bend and break the rules as far as I can, to the point where I buy food for clients myself. From my own money, for which I am being disciplined for, and, as a part time worker and single parent with rent, travel, bills, food and childcare to cover on my own i can incidentally really not afford to do. And given away my personal posessions to people refused budgeting loans and social care grants . I have given out more than 1 voucher before, it wasn’t honoured as they had used one previously in the month and it was recorded on their file.

I fail to see how me striking would help, even if it was sanctioned by the union, and I think I am much better off continuing to do my job…. I have worked in local government for 15 years and have never crossed a picket line, and supported all strike actions called. I don’t know why you assume I wouldn’t support a strike if there was one called.

You obviously buy into the gold plated pensions myths about how cushy it is in local government. The divisiveness of the shirker v worker rhetoric comes through loud and clear in your post, and it’s exactly what the government want. ‘them and us’ shouldn’t be worker v unemployed, that’s petty nonsense and detracts from the real ‘them and us’ issue which is surely a class issue. I really think you are directing your anger at the wrong person.

I am not upholding the cruel system in any way, I’m busy looking for loopholes and getting people as much as possible for as long as possible.

Service end? I don’t think so. You have no clue about me, or how hard I work, or what my ethics and beliefs are. Maybe you shouldnt make assumptions.

Okay, and what do you suggest I do? I already bend and break the rules as far as I can, to the point where I buy food for clients myself. From my own money, for which I am being disciplined for, and, as a part time worker and single parent with rent, travel, bills, food and childcare to cover on my own i can incidentally really not afford to do. And given away my personal posessions to people refused budgeting loans and social care grants . I have given out more than 1 voucher before, it wasn’t honoured as they had used one previously in the month and it was recorded on their file.

I fail to see how me striking would help, even if it was sanctioned by the union, and I think I am much better off continuing to do my job…. I have worked in local government for 15 years and have never crossed a picket line, and supported all strike actions called. I don’t know why you assume I wouldn’t support a strike if there was one called.

You obviously buy into the gold plated pensions myths about how cushy it is in local government. The divisiveness of the shirker v worker rhetoric comes through loud and clear in your post, and it’s exactly what the government want. ‘them and us’ shouldn’t be worker v unemployed, that’s petty nonsense and detracts from the real ‘them and us’ issue which is surely a class issue. I really think you are directing your anger at the wrong person.

I am not upholding the cruel system in any way, I’m busy looking for loopholes and getting people as much as possible for as long as possible.

Service end? I don’t think so. You have no clue about me, or how hard I work, or what my ethics and beliefs are. Maybe you shouldnt make assumptions.

Dear people you do realise that computer screens and mobile phones emit radiation. Oh, I know that the rulers will say it’s a tiny amount and therefore not harmless BUT this has not been proven yet. Personally with the rise of the internet and mobile phone use I think that humans are starting to regress both emotional and intelligence wise. So I would say that they cannot force you to use the aforementioned devices as it will be detrimental to your health. Not sure how that one would be received within the JCP. But until they can prove or disprove that the amount of radiation is harmless YOU ARE AT RISK AND THE GOVERNMENT COULD BE SLOWLY KILLING YOU OFF!

it this moment in time a sanction stops your JSA which is not a mager problem to me as I get £22 aweek due to having a pension. on UC all benifits are in one place. thats child tax credit, child benifit and housing/council tax. if Iget sanctioned under UC then Ill be screwed. thats why there putting everything in one pot, it gives them total controle of every penny you get.

I think you’ve been misled. I was told that as long as you produce written evidence in respect to jobs applied for and interviews attended etc., you were square with the Jobcentre. I’m pretty sure that you do not have to print out details from UJM or use it to log your jobseeking efforts. Maybe this was suggested to you and you agreed to do it without challenging it.

Issuing a Jobseeker’s Direction to mandate JSA claimants to
create a profile and public CV in Universal Jobmatch

52. However, for legal reasons, you cannot issue a Jobseeker’s Direction to
mandate a claimant to create a profile and public CV unless a DWP IAD
service is reasonably available to them should they need to use one – for
example, because they do not want to accept cookies and therefore need
to have access to a device on which cookies have already been accepted.

53. You also cannot issue a Jobseeker’s Direction to mandate a claimant to
give us access to their account – this is their decision not ours.

Actively Seeking Employment

82. We cannot specify to a JSA claimant how they provide us with records of
their jobsearch activity and Universal Jobmatch will not change this.

A lot of people have been duped into signing up for UJM and into giving the JCP advisor access to their UJM accounts. It’s not mandatory to sign up to UJM, (though there is ostensibly powers to mandate people to sign up, but that doesn’t mean you actually have to use it, and their mandates have to be ‘reasonable’ according to individual circumstances – which would be difficult to substantiate if you were already supplying them with sufficient evidence of your jobsearch, which if you had any sense at all you would already be doing. Even if you allow them access to your UJM account, you can easily remove it.

It would seem to me that anyone sanctioned for refusing to sign up to UJM would have been subject to an illegal sanction, as it is not a mandatory requirement to sign up, and it certainly isn’t lawful to bully someone into giving the JCP access to your UJM account anyway. You can also delete your UJM account, and your Government Gateway account should you wish.

I ‘declined’ the invitation to register with UJM back in November last year, and though my advisor did half-heartedly try and persuade me to sign up, he wasn’t exactly singing it’s praises – even suggesting that creating a fake account might be an idea! Needless to say I didn’t sign up, and I’m still presenting my jobsearch on my own computer printout every fortnight.

Boycott Workfare produced a very useful leaflet that outlines your rights under the legislation for both UJM and Workfare about a month ago, you can find it on their site.

Joanne lives near to the well-known town of ‘Jobberwocky’ which has many, many friendly and helpful shopkeepers who don’t mind armies of (increasingly) desparate-looking people calling in to hand out (the same) CV at least once a week, around every 15/20 minutes …. of course. There are 10 main streets – more on some weeks, full of thriving shops run by owners with a social conscience. If the people making up the rules know anything about anything, it’s that our lives are all similar to ‘Joanne’ – barring a few minor details.

Jobberwocky (twinned with Snark) has 50 disabled toilets, no steps, and preferential hiring policies towards disabled, black/Asian, and gay people.
There are no potholes, no EDL, and no Jeremy Kyle or Hunt. There are two flying buses every 5 minutes in all directions. Childcare is universal. Children there or in school never need taking home early. The village is experimenting with alternative energy and has invented time-turners for all villagers, enabling them to work 50 hours a day 8 days a week. The cafes serve vegan organic nutritious food nonstop to feed the workforce. There are opportunities catching flying pigs, working in the local treacle mine, or giving a flying fuck. On days off (doable with a time-turner), you can go to Cloud-Cuckoo-Land and shop endlessly to boost the sacred economy for the sake of the economy for the sake of the economy.
Nobody ever gets ill. Most people do at least 4 fulltime jobs simultaneously. Children are in bed 4pm-7am and do not need washing, feeding, or talking to; and never misbehave. Sundays involve 2 hours praying to the economy, followed by the rest of the day working. Holidays are not a normal part of the working week, as everyone is too tired and busy and HAPPY. People do varied jobs like painting the buses with go-faster paint. All landlords love to have people on benefits and never evict people whose benefit is late. There are plans for exchange visits with Toyland, Trumpton, and Bedrock.

When will people start the physical revolution and stop moaning from behind their keyboards? – its no wonder this govt thinks it can get away with all this nonsense as everyone is too scared to do anything about it all!

If you ask me this is all a load of crap that won’t work in practise. Unless they have someone watching you 35 hrs a week how will they know. As for cold calling employers 4 times a week up to 90 mins away..? That would cost about £50 I reckon leaving £21 to live on.

They are just as round the bend as Thatcher was. I don’t think the system will work at all- too detailed, too paranoid, too confusing and that’s before you even start to consider the human rights issues. Unbelievable drivel that is unbelievably cruel.

Iain Drunken Spiv needs to be exported somewhere where there are no humans he can damage- and FAST.

Sorry Karin I didn’t see your post but was thinking almost exactly as you. Foolish and unworkable in the real world (of course that’s the problem) not to mention nasty, sadistic bullying of the UK citizen of the worst kind. Unforgiveable!

i have splints on both my hands, psoriatic arthritis, most of my joints hurt, i have psoriasis, crohns disease, asthma and severe depression. i according to atos am fit for work. can you please explain why.

That could be tricky as ATOS ass- -essors are unable to tell the difference between a person in a wheelchair, He-Man, and an actual cabbage. All 3 were found fit for work, but He-Man got sent to a desk job,
processing benefits claims. The person in the wheelchair was amusingly forced to become a chimney sweep; and as for the cabbage: it got lucky and was sent to the DWP, where it devised a brilliant new scheme called Universal Cabbage. Oh sorry, Universal Credit.

No, UC is intellectually unworthy of a cabbage, It came from people like Iron Duke Splat. Flying Ace (in the hole) of the Zombie Air Force.

After winning a stay of execution lasting 24 months through the appeals tribunal service the DWP have now come back at me in less than 12 months. Buggers, which I believe to be a ruse to move me off the higher rate ESA. They’re in for a shock, as since then a “large anachroid cyst” has appeared between the membrane of my brain and seems to have been present for some time. There is also spaces that are present and thinning of the skull on the left hand side, I think present from my childhood, which was not treated at the local hospital (my parents couldn’t be bothered). This, with other major physical symptoms (Reiters syndrome, ankylosing spondylitis), coupled with clinical depression (leading to a serious suicide attempt) and ending up in an acute medical ward will lead them to find it very difficult to find me “fit for work”, especially going against the tribunal decision. I’ve written to Atos and my MP (no reply as yet) and telephoned the DWP, who said they had no record of the 24 months. As I instructed the Decision Maker to note this the day after the tribunal when the phoned to “apologise” and the DM assured me that she had then I know for definite that someone is deliberately lying about this. I have until the end of this month to return the form, which I will not filled in, giving the reasons why and if they stop my benefits then all hell will break lose. As I said Atos and my MP know about this as well as the DWP themselves. In between all this I lost all the members of my family, including my identical twin brother and a younger sister. My mother died in December 2011. I also lost my job. Any messing about from the bureaucrats and I go to the media.

I have questions: the government is obligated to pay legally what legislation has authorised to people who find themselves in the unfortunate position of being unemployed, not well enough to work, underpaid if working etc.
The “benefit commitment” term and paperwork seems to me be be a legal weasle out of the concept of the governments contract with its people with regards to social security payments.
The implied conditionality ie sign and agree to our terms ie we dictate what your commitment must be OR ELSE you are destitute is like an odious contract ie there is no “informed consent”. Has this aspect of an apparent attempt to legally via a sharp practice change the nature of the relationship between the recipients of social security (insurance) payouts and the trustees of the social security funds aka the DWP been legally challenged?
Also, it seems to me that by using the phrase commitment, it implies falsely that the trustees of the social security funds aka DWP are trying to weasal out of their contractual obligations in dispersing the funds ie Wednesday principals. Have these and other legal aspects been challenged?
It is terrible what they are doing – it stinks of the DWP trying to renege on their contractual responsibilities to pay out (will IDS and Hoban refuse all insurance and annuity payouts to themselves from now on?), a further stigmatisation and hounding of people groing through bad times, and heartlessness and ruthlessness which will cause further homelessness, ill health and broken spirits and lives and deaths. They either have not done due diligence re the (should be obvious) “logistics” of being poor, sick, unemployed, working poor or they don’t care. It is financially stupid as it does not save money and creates greater costs to local authorities, health services and the central government in the short medium and long run.
I don’t know how they can sleep at night.

@harassed. That’s what the switch to ‘commitment’ from ‘agreement’ is all too obviously about. (There’s a lot in a name). It won’t be the first thing people ask about necessarily (why is this a commitment not an agreement?) even if the question is in their minds as they sign – if they did ask, there would be a stock response.

What you’re saying is interesting because in contracts, by law/convention there is an ‘opt-in’ (if taking up a job offer say, or taking out a loan). This document, though, is presenting itself as that but the option to say ‘no thanks’ isn’t there (assuming alternative source(s) of income are not available). So, in theory, it could say anything (“I agree to shoot myself in the foot x3 per week”) – and people are compelled to sign it – or receive nothing … Apart from how they’re managing to sleep at night (via extreme denial) – the moral question, there’s the legal one – which they must surely have covered their backsides regarding – equivalent to the part on job descriptions that says “and anything else we may find for you to do” (under the ‘all reasonable steps to look for work’ catch-all phrase?). (We can stipulate anything/we will deem it ‘reasonable’/you have to meet our requirements).

Challenging the principle is an obvious point (through the proper channels). Challenging individually and through Freedom of Information requests are other alternatives – but the important phrase here might be, ‘Over a [proverbial] barrel’. (where they seem to have us). We could really do with someone like [insert name of top barrista here] agreeing to try to pull out all the stops and say ‘stop this now – it’s inhumane’. This isn’t happening though (£s?) – and questions raised ‘in the house’ and elsewhere are being answered superficially, so that only the top layer of the ‘issue’ is ever addressed (& semantics come into play/justifications are made citing the ‘apparent’ but not the actual motivations behind the measures). Which leaves all those caught up ‘on the receiving end’ without any recourse & no choice – somehow similar to the man in the Munsch painting (The Scream) – silently screaming, but agreeing to sign ever-increasingly harmful ‘official’ documents – even as they may be well aware that this is what they’re being presented with/what they’re doing isn’t just about ‘an agreement to look for work’ but much more complex.
But because of the many, many gradual ‘change’ introduced and every removal/addition being introduced incrementally & built on top of one other, (if/when challenged) they can be made to seem ‘reasonable’, ‘logical’, even ‘practical. They are part of a context set up to be ostensibly about ‘support’/’help’ and supposedly, ‘motivation’. So can be explained as ‘the logical next step’.

What’s worrying (to say the least) is the numbers of people ‘uninvolved’ who may still believe JCP/DWP are about what they were supposed to have been about – to ‘enough’ of a degree (helping people to find jobs/even keeping them ‘motivated’ or on track). Others will not be interested either way if not directly affected -they don’t manage to make a connection between what’s going on in the outside world with what’s going on inside the DWP – or if they see one, are ‘unsympathetic’. Potentially, it’s getting towards a possible interim period where ‘they’ could, potentially, build big enough JCPs (change the name), install rows and rows of computers and desks – set up to UJ – out of town where they wouldn’t look unsightly – and throw away the key. The (2nd) worst part of even considering this type of scenario (for me) is that that until or unless someone had to become part of this ‘system’ themselves (they could be working at an office 100m away, for example) there wouldn’t necessarily be any public awareness of what’s happening – just as now, there doesn’t seem to be a wish to know – and the channels of potential redress are very much ‘access denied’. Perhaps I’m just imagining aspects of the ‘Work Pogrom’ as that’s my next stop on the treadmill (I mean journey).

obd~ i wonder why …. (agree that hiding behind sofas is ever-popular).
Soon decisions on whether to sell the sofa or hide behind it could be the order of the day.

Paragraph in the Guardian just seen saying that Atos employee (most) recent leaked email talks about how staff being expected to do the more & more impossible/improbable To Save Money … Columnist suggesting that just about the only person involved in the whole sham(eful) system not now suffering ill-effects as a result must be IDS. (Money-makers inside/at the top of Atos not mentioned).

sn
a dilemma i agree, but there is a distinct line that can be drawn…it is all to do with having income and having no income..i guess it is the same problem that martin niemoller, faced…stanley milgram…freud…et al faced….and never solved but merely by-passed, like those who use the excuse of changing form within…until one is changed from within..and one is stuck, no way back or apparently no way back,every human being, is intuitive..and intuitively knows right from wrong…even hitler did…having a grander plan, does not mask cover up…

10,600 ATOS victims in 2012. They do not give ATOS! They are too clever to need to build gas chambers, much cheaper to let everyone starve to death. There will be no outcry since all MSM is controlled. Jail is extremely profitable for them. The war on Terrorism has started and we have no ammo or resources, they know we are fucked. I have already lost my health, family, career but it’s not enough for them. Now I have to fight bailiffs for my home next week with my chronic pain. Still waiting for ATOS appeal date…

The Department for Work and Pensions is under investigation by a health watchdog for administering “sham” psychometric tests to the unemployed and threatening to withdraw their benefits if they did not complete them.

This maybe nothing, or it could be a whole lot more but, since using this UJM site the past few months i’ve noticed some odd things, it consistently shows a list of jobs for 2015 ??
I will do my job search and get a list of all local jobs, then i click one, and when i click my back button to go back to the list, i’m presented with a completely different list, which has had me confused a few times, as i cannot find the job i just clicked on, then i notice the date of all these jobs is 2015 !?
It is an error yes, as when i click refresh i get my original list back with correct dates, this doesn’t ALWAYS happen when i click back, and sometimes it happens when hitting the search button.

What i want to know is why they have a list of jobs on the server dated for 2015 ?

Apply for it and say you got the job and start it in 2015.
“Who gave you the job?”
“The king of the potato people.”

Or: essential jobseeker toolkit now includes
a) A time machine, Tardis or similar
b) blindfold and earplugs to stop you looking at or listening to JCP staff
c) expanding foam to put in their machines
d) A lit flare bunged through the JCP door at night.

I have a job and I’m doing it already.
JCP: “What are you doing?”
Your mother.

—————————
Brilliant. Take them at their word. Apply for the 2015 jobs. Then you proved you applied for jobs on Universal Golfcart. It never said WHICH jobs….

Written evidence of jobseeking activity. You know they don’t read it because they ask questions that are stated in your form. It proves they’ve not read it, when they check the box on screen to tell their boss they have read it. In other words a blatant lie. There’s no rule anywhere that says how big or how small you can write. It doesn’t in fact say what you should write.
So as small as possible write a very long entry and end it something like:
“Then I met the Pope, solved world hunger and rode on a quagga to see the king of the potato people. There was a minor nuclear war before dessert, but it soon all got sorted out. I was hired by NASA to fly into space in my underpants to divert a speeding meteor away from the earth. After this I applied for jobs by carrier pigeon till I got bored and decided to go to an icecream parlour instead. I got talking to Marilyn Monroe, and she said the CIA were looking for her so could she hide in my ear. I converted her into a digital signal and went away to Russia with her, and married her off to Nikita Kruschev. Since then I’ve been driving tanks for the Chinese Army and in my spare time teaching goldfish to knit Aran sweaters.. Every Thursday at 33 o’clock we all sit down for dodo and chips.It got a bit samey so I came back here, shagged your dad, and now I’m in the jobcentre. Actually I didn’t, but it was just to check that as I suspected you never bother to read what I write. Now that you’ve lied at work they might sack you.”

I feel that i’m wasting my time with them, over 200 jobs applied for in last 6 months, only 3 interviews and approx 20 responses saying no thanks.

They want to imprison the unemployed into their newly Privatized Prisons, and to do it, they just have to sanction you, therefore FORCING you to commit a crime.
This is a corporate takeover, we are under a Totalitarian Communist Dictatorship, we have been and are being systematically ROBBED, CONNED

I sometimes wish it was, but it ain’t. It’s the neoliberal nightmare that promised freedom and liberty, but what we got was a low wage economy and the rights well fought for, mainly by communists as it happens instead. Hyperbole doesn’t really add substance to a point, just makes the one doing it look a loon.

Political labels never been my strong point, but DONT try telling me, we haven’t seen a corporate take over, the UK gov is a PLC, and it is ran by the banks, the money calls the shots, we do not have a democratic leadership, it’s always between two parties, giving us an illusion of choice. The governemtn is there to protect CORPORATE interest not THE PEOPLE.
It is also NOT an exaggeration that they are looking to create a slave prison camp (chinese style) work force.
Do your research, another FIVE prisons privatised in 2012, they’re making CRIME PAY, just not for those doing the crime.
This year i have been threatened with homelessness TWICE, the DWP have just hit me with a £500 debt from THEIR error from 2009. i’ve only been unemployed 6 damn months and i feel like a criminal, the threats of court action in those 6 months have been more than i’ve ever seen. Yet this winter i froze, couldn’t have the heating on, no money, i went a week without food due to another DWP error (see abovce somewhere) i ate every other day for two weeks while they sorted my messed up claim out, during that time i’ve been threatened with eviction twice, the council have revoked my bills in instalments, i have been very close to commiting crime in order for warmth and food, if they evict me i am DEAD, with my spine conditon one cold night would be enough to kill me.
To know the club exists you have to be on the receiving end.

I’m in the club and Atos, politicians and the DWP, who just yesterday finally got around to sortimg out another issue that has been hell on earth. In 2011 I was in a position where I had two appeals running concurrently. I went through some grim times in the late 70’s and throughout the 80’s (long term health problems), but nothing comes close to this madness we’re in. I’ve had to fight very hard for very little. Making assumptions about someone you know nothing about I avoid. I don’t like labels either, but I wasn’t the one making them. We live in a corporate world it’s true, but China is state capitalist, we have as I said neoliberal ideology and that for the last 30 years, or so. China is a very controlled place to be and I abhor it’s treatment of workers, but even so recognise that the state there has brought a massive 350 million Chinese out of dire poverty in the last few years and it’s pretty organised when the on-going export slump began to affect the unemployment rate dramatically, so the re-organise and move to infrastructure projects to off-set some of the deficit in the labour market. Slavery is not the goal in developed countries, but a fitter, meaner capitalism is. I hope things get better for you, but realistically it’s going to very tough for many, those with little skill especially, as it is a high skill, high tech, post-fordist world. Mainly service industries, finance here have taken over from the industrial sector that was dismantled in the last few decades. We need solidarity to fight this corrupt, rotten, decaying system and international in scope and particularly to avoid reactionary knee jerk responses to the crisis. That will only make things worse for all of us struggling around the world, including the 1.4 billion Chinese.

The real point of all of this nonsense is to harry and persecute people hoping to make their lives so intolerable that they will end up being forced into any kind of job that happens to be going to escape the bullying. You can almost imagine the Work Programme and Jobecentre staff trying to discover people’s weak spots, e.g., making someone shy and tongue-tied cold call employers or try to hand out CVs to the uninterested or making somebody with some kind of slight physical imperfection do mandated work activity time in the belief that increasing their pain and suffering will drive them into work. It’s all about conditionality and the idea that if you keep racking up the pressure on people, even though you yourself can’t refer them for jobs or get them into work directly, will somehow of other compel them into work that doesn’t exist for employers who do not want them.

It’s very cruel and ultimately futile.

I never thought I would ever see anything quite this bad happen in the UK.

You are right, that is how i feel right now, i have applied for a couple of jobs already that i know i probably won’t be physically able to do, but the pay is right and the bullying and provocation is getting too much, they’re in your head 24/7 which is counterproductive, anxiety is not conducive to productivity…. this is 1984
Someone needs to do a contemporary remake of 1984, the original was too arty and surreal for people to relate to their own modern daily experience, we’ve had an arty representation of a bleak future, but now we are IN that future, and can paint the scenes much more literally instead of imagination and metaphor, i can see it now in my head, the full film, and by the end it would leave the viewer looking at themselves and the world around them in truer light.

Never had to worry about education fees, rent, food, pocket money. Guaranteed jobs when and if they wanted one through contacts. I can see why the majority of politicians think it’s so simple – “just go out and get a job you lazy scroungers”. If only reality was so straightforward.

They screwed my life chances in the mid 80’s with Thatcher and now they blame me for my current predicament. Marvellous.

I went for a job working in the NHS and do you know how many hoops you have to jump through? This was an groundworker job part time, min wage, not a medical job! Ten years CV, 4 references, CRB, two interviews, interviewed by two psychologists. After all that BS nothing.

If they really wanted people to get “back to work” they (the government) would employ the long term unemployed in civil service jobs (like NHS) making it easy for them to get these jobs instead of all the nonsense which makes it virtually impossible. Two to five years solid work history could then start to repair your work history giving you a chance of competing in the private sector. The private sector is ruthless and don’t want to know if you’re long-term unemployed. I find the government don’t practice what they preach. No vision just useless.

You can’t be forced to sign anything , If everyone refused to sign then it would fail before it started , What can they do stop every ones money he could but i dought that he would, show them you won’t put up with any more of there crap while we all accept what is being thrown at us the more he gets away with it the more he will throw at us .

“(No DWP access to their account)
87. You may ask claimants to show prints of any number or all of the screens/pages detailed in the paragraph 86 (Activity History,Application History,Alerts,Messages,Saved Jobs,Recommended Jobs,Saved Searches) from their Universal Jobmatch account”

The JCP staff have the ability to demand printed copies at any time of anything on your Universal Jobmatch account, they’ve effectively side stepped the Data Protection Act entirely and making that DWP opt-out option effectively useless.

From 1 july 2013 we are introducing changes to how you we aim to help you
When you sign on your usual signing day you may be seen instead by a personal advisor to discuss what help you feel you need from us to try to get you back into work as soon as possible you will also be told about the various forms of help we can offer and also what training and other courses are available to you these meetings will last up to an hour ttherefore please ensure that when you attend to sign that you allow sufficient time to take part in one of these meetings should it be that day participation in the meeting is a requirement of your continued entitlement to benefit

The irony is that help you has a line through it .
That was not writing on jobcentre headed paper so don’t know if it’s an internal letter

These toff i nbred millionare pigs at the q Welfare trough. They are evil. I cnt fink of any otha reason. You would fink that some of wot theyare doin wood b illegal. And all their bullshit austerity proganda. If It that bad they could chip in some of their millions or dø away wiv the biggest welfare scroungers the royal family and get tax bak from google et al. It blantant class war. Name of their game is to shame and humiliate those who been victim of their policies.

our library charges 10p per sheet of paper so my cv cost 20p + 10p for a covering letter. 10 job apps will cost me £3 + the cost of getting to the library. when I get to the library I cant garantee ill get on the computer as their booked in one hour slots and one hours all you get a day.
i need to get printer fixed, life will be a lot simpler.

I’ve just suffered reading some of the bureaucratic nonsensical banality on ESA. This is also covered if you happen to be in the unfortunate position of being on both on benefits and in debt. This they can now recover without your consent. How about this for a hark back to Dickensian pauperism:

“The claimant should be left with at least 10p specified benefit after third party deductions have been made1. No deduction should be made if it would leave the claimant with less than 10p. But see DMG 46205 and DMG 46235 for when the deduction may be adjusted instead of not being made.”

Please sir can I have some more?
MORE!
‘Gotta pick a pocket, or two…..’

Time for people to not recognize this goverment. and start causing big problems , i hope people riot and take out the internet boxes ,i heard people in a park talking ,they were saying people now should be like the french resistance, not riotihg down the local high street ,its more effective i grined with agreement ,they new what they needed to do when the crunch comes..

I have a question/comment/point, (maybe more than one actually) although I am probably not as clued up as many of you on here, nor do I have a great knowledge of the politics involved nor the legislation. Am I right in understanding that even though I ALREADY HAVE A JOB (but only 19.5 hours) I will be required to sign this “Commitment” if I want to claim the Universal Credit??? and that I then will have to look for a 35 hour per week job, or a second job to make my hours up to 35, (most likely resulting in me being unavailable for overtime or holiday cover)? My employer is unlikely to be able to increase my hours as it is a small business and would result in someone else losing their job if she took me on full time. There are only three employees and the owner. Myself and one other are both single parents working 16 and 19.5 hours per week. I have 2 teenage boys to support (one will be in Uni from next year) and I am in rented accommodation. Are all the elements of the Universal Credit subject to these conditions, or just the Housing Benefit element, or that and the Working Tax Credit/Child Tax Credit element???… If i don’t satisfy their “Commitment” by looking for these extra hours on my days off, will I then have to lose a job I love to go work somewhere else?? and also be prepared to travel for 90 minutes each way? (I have no car)
I thought it was meant to support people already IN work?
Not feasibly mean the LOSS of my job. I am not saying I don’t want to work full time, but that I already have a job I love and that the extra hours I would need simply aren’t there. If she could offer me 35 hours I would snap her hand off!!!

Any Voiders on the dole since they brought in the new Jobsearch booklets? I had a bit of a bizarre one recently. The new version is an A5 size booklet, on each page is a WHAT I WILL DO box and below, WHAT I DID AND WHAT WAS THE RESULT.

Basically, the advisor – or “coach” as they’re now called” bitched me out because I hadn’t written down “What I WILL do” at the start of that fortnight of my jobsearch. I generally do it in the style of a diary, specifying exactly what I’ve done each day. But this wasn’t good enough for Mr Pedantic Jobsworth. He said he could “take action” against me if I didn’t lay it out in that exact format. However, it also says to be as specific as possible and the way he wants me to write it down would rely on me cramming a fortnight’s worth of jobhunting in that tiny WHAT I DID box. The way I write it down allows me two days a page. Anyway, I looked at him and told him to save his threats for somebody who deserves it as none of his colleagues have ever objected to the way I write. They’re fine with me as they can see I’m looking for work and proving it in extensive detail. But I think some people just go out of their way to look for things they can nitpick at.

My personal adviser who I saw yesterday is a nice guy, though warned me of the same thing if I got someone more jobsworthy. He stressed he personally could see I was making an effort, but that it was best to fill it in by the week. Again, I apply to too many people for that. If I do get any trouble from anyone, I intend to refer them to the bit of the DWP toolkit that says they can’t specify to claimants HOW we provide the record of our jobsearch, as long as we’re doing it. In fact, I’d love to see them try. It used to be that you’d only get sanctioned for not looking for work properly, or not proving you were. Now you can get sanctioned for doing too much, just because someone won’t accept the way you wrote it. Someone else on a previous claim moaned at me for getting through too many books – well, isn’t that a good thing??? Surely that shows I’m making an effort? They should be going after the people who stubbornly stick to the tiniest minimum required and then piss about for the rest of the fortnight. I did prefer the old booklets as you could just write it down by individual activity and no one gave you shit as long as you’d been applying for stuff.

That’s what the coach said yesterday, that I could fill it in on Jobmatch – however, out of principle I refuse to give them access. He said “But it’s read only, we can’t manipulate it or anything like that!” I told him that wasn’t the point, I just don’t like the thought of being monitored, especially when he can see for himself I’m jobhunting and proving it. I even include UJ reference numbers for the jobs I’ve found on that site, so there’s nothing stopping him from checking I really did apply. Not that this particular coach was giving me grief himself, just warning me that others might. But it pisses me off how much discretion the advisers are given in general. But if I get the original bloke again and he gives me a hard time, I’ll just explain that my coach has no objections to the way I lay my jobsearch out, and ask for his manager if he persists with his power trip.

They can ask for print outs of jobmatch But cannot get access Rather stupid that rule My coach tries too persuade me too give him access but he out of luck I take my print outs Ink is not cheap A know the they cannot say how we provide prove of jobsearch Yet because a use jobmatch they will not take any other prove bar my print outs

I just tried doing it on UJ, thinking I could print it off and bring it with me to sign on – but it only allows you 300 characters max. It’s their own stupid fault for designing the booklets for someone who does the least they can get away with. Talk about building a system on false assumptions!

UJM has jobs in my local area from July!! I have been given the dreaded Claimant Commitment interview. Hate the damn thing already. I have large handwriting and can never write straight, so good luck to them for trying to read my handwriting.

If they can magically have jobs out of thin air, I have a Bsc and a Masters and I can’t get a job or a PhD as I don’t have an honours degree (it was shut down just before the honours year.)

I also have a learning difficulty (technicaly mine should be a learning disability as I am dyspraxic). I can’t apply for ESA as they deemed it not being serious enough! I can’t drive for one.

Just read this today and after seeing this comment I immediately looked up the color meanings/symbolism and now I feel like I’ve been spoilered! But I’m oddly happy and content. hahaha, wonder if Yukino is aware of the hidden meaning, hence that ngggggh farewell.

Greetings I am so delighted I found your blog, I really found you by error, while I was searching on Aol for something else, Anyways I am here now and would just like to say kudos for a tremendous post and a all round exciting blog (I also love the theme/design), I don’t have time to browse it all at the minute but I have bookmarked it and also added your RSS feeds, so when I have time I will be back to read a great deal more, Please do keep up the great job.

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